As Fortnite rotates its content in and out of availability, veteran players find themselves yearning for old classics that might not be accessible anymore, or wishing for certain items to stay in the game for longer than might've been initially planned. To that end, Epic introduced the concept of Funding Stations that allow players to vote on returning content.Specifically, Fortnite's player base found itself in a bit of a pickle when Epic presented players with the choice between the Combat Assault Rifle and the MK-Seven. Only one of these two weapons was going to be temporarily unvaulted via a new Funding Station offering, and the community needed to vote on which of the two would be sticking around.Even though Fortnite's MK-Seven was nerfed earlier this year following its Chapter 3 release, the weapon has remained a mainstay in many players' favored combat loadouts. It's a powerful, versatile armament with a reflex sight that can dish out damage reasonably well at all ranges. To that end, it wasn't too surprising to see that it won even over the revered Combat Assault Rifle, which was reasonably popular in its own right.
Now that it won its Unvaulting Battle, the MK-Seven AR will be widely available for players to enjoy for some time. It's worth pointing out that it can drop as one of the Mythic weapons in Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2, too, which makes it even more valuable as a random drop. Note that there doesn't seem to be a firm timeline in place for when unvaulted items would be getting thrown back into the vault, but fans of the Combat Assault Rifle may get another shot at getting the gun back into the game in the near future.
The concept of weapon reintroductions is hardly foreign to this game, as Fortnite recently unvaulted the Heavy Sniper Rifle as part of Patch 20.10. This is an effective way of both reusing existing content and leveraging player nostalgia in one fell swoop, allowing Epic to redeploy assets that would've otherwise been left in the dust. At the same time, patches are never entirely about unvaulted content, which means that even those players that aren't keen on the practice get other novelties to play around with.
Epic has been very busy with its flagship title on all fronts, not just in regard to keeping the game relevant for players both new and old. Just a few days back, the company announced that Fortnite and Xbox raised $144 million for Ukraine, which ought to be a huge boon for the country's defensive efforts - all thanks to Fortnite's community of players.
Fortnite is free-to-play on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.